Scrabble pushes up sales of lottery cards

Scrabble pushes up sales of lottery cards

UK National Lottery has unveiled the highest level increase of its scratchcards sales for more than six years. According to Icwales.icnetwork.co.uk, players bought more than GBP15m worth of scratchcards last week - a figure not seen since March 1998.

Lottery operator Camelot tends to associate the sales growth with success of a scratchcard based on Scrabble which was launched on August 2. Sales for the one scratchcard alone were well over GBP2.5m last week.

Camelot unveiled latest figures last week that showed National Lottery sales for all games in July were 6.7% up on the same month last year.

Scratchcards were invented in March 1995 and immediately resulted in GBP17m to GBP18m a week, remaining at that level until 1997 when they began to fall. In 1999/2000 when weekly sales dropped to around GBP10m a week, and started rising since then right up to the recent GBP 15 million weeks.

Camelot claims that the success of the Scrabble scratchcard was a key factor behind the growth. The company used well-known games to stimulate sales of instant-win scratchcards. Other versions were based on Monopoly, Twister and Connect 4.

Chris Lock, the business manager for scratchcards at Camelot, said yesterday, "We are thrilled by the huge popularity of the Scrabble scratchcard and the successful sales performance of our broader scratchcard portfolio."